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We may have a great job.
Or an envious education.
Perhaps we are settled as per the definition of the world.

Yet, we feel something is missing.
There is a hole within that none of the external things are able to fulfill.

What if we asked ourselves, “what is the one thing I want right now”? Not five, not three, just one; and then chase it.
It could be money, or work life balance or more family time – there is no right or wrong, there is just one inherent need that we all must fulfill. If we fulfill that one need, we will feel at peace with ourselves.

When we want everything, we end up with nothing.
When we optimise for one thing, almost everything takes care of itself.

We have two colleges to pick from.
Two career options to choose.
Two different opinions to a problem.

Which one should you pick, when both seem to be conflicting choices?

The one that brings more pain in the short term.

No one knows how a decision would turn out to be prior to making it.
The only thing we do know that the harder path is the one where the pot of gold most likely lies.

Happiness is not short term.

Eating chocolate.
Scrolling right before sleeping and after waking up.
Binge-watching.

They all satisfy a dopamine urge, they don’t make us happy. In the long-term, doing these consistently makes us miserable.

To check if something makes us truly happy, the real introspection is to go for five levels of happiness. What will happen if I do this? And then? And then? After that? Then?
It’ll give perspective and wisdom to make wiser choices.

Anything that makes us happy now and lousy later is a distraction disguised as happiness.

Having no plan in life and being okay is a great place to be.

This, however, does not apply to our days.

It’s fine to not know what life would look like five years hence.
It’s not fine to not know what our day would look like.

Take care of the day and the decade falls into place.
– James Clear

Everyone has fears. Even the ones who appear fearless.

Being fearless isn’t about not feeling any fear.
It is about knowing that no matter what the fear is, you have the courage to face it.
Dealing with fears is the real courage.

Being fearless is embracing fear. 

It’s not hard to get on to a stage and speak.
It’s not hard to open your phone, hit record, and post a reel.
It’s not hard to write a cold email to someone in power.

We feel they are hard things, because that is how we have convinced ourselves.

That is how we have convinced ourselves.

The hardest thing in the world is to convince ourselves.
The world will, by default, follow.

A friend of yours got married at “the right time”.
Another one got settled abroad.
The neighbour spends weekends relaxing and weekdays grinding. 

The world is out there chasing the obvious things.
Settling down quickly. 

However, if we chase what everyone else is chasing we will end up with what everyone else does.
Chasing something that does not excite us ends up with a life that does not excite us.
Chasing something because there is no other option visible ends up with no other options visible.

The obvious way to beat the resistance is to resist the obvious.

How will we ever know what we could if we are always entangled with what the world does?

Trends are cool.
Around pop culture, news, sports, fashion, work habits. 

They make us feel like we belong – we laugh with them, engage with them, show off with them, follow them. 

However, the very nature of trends is that they will vanish.
Very soon.

What stays behind is what really matters – timeless content from time to time.

The best way to not be a trend is to ask what is likely to never change.
And follow that. 

“I don’t have the time.”
This self-sabotaging statement drifts people from acting on their dream projects.

The universal truth is everyone has the same twenty-four hours.

What we do during that window makes or does not make a difference.

Searching for more time is essentially searching for more energy.
When we figure out how to have more energy we’ll be left with even more time!

We don’t need more time.
We just need more self awareness to pursue things that give us energy.

Chasing worldly success is illusive.
What looks like success to us doesn’t match with others.

Setting our own standards of success, irrespective of the noises is real success.

Staying true to those standards is getting truly successful.

Everyone has their own metric of success.
The same applies to us as well.